Work package 8

Policy insights and insights for sustainability

The development of urban areas is holistic and therefore difficult to grasp. The policy makers are expected to improve the economic, environmental, transport and social performance of their city. This is difficult for two reasons. First, these indicators interact in a complex way and there is often a trade-off between them. Second, the policy maker has to decide between alternative developments that differ in many dimensions: some parts of the city may do better (say within a toll cordon), others worse (say outside the toll cordon), some income groups do better than others when city centre is revitalised, there may be a short term gain (by making an area greener and safer) but a long term loss (this may cause a loss of social integration in the city). The SustainCity model helps to understand the complex relations between the different policy dimensions and helps to translate the effects of policy actions into outcomes. What is lacking is the operationalisation of the complex SustainCity model into policy inputs and policy outcomes. This is the objective of this work package.